Pathographies

A Pathography is a narrative that gives voice and face to the illness experience. It puts the person behind the disease in the forefront and as such is a great learning opportunity for all care givers and fellow sufferers. This blog is a repository for these stories. Please send us your favorites.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

You are invited to
spend some time with Mr. Marsh, an eloquent neurosurgeon who escorts us
into his operating theater, his parent's home as his mother lies dying,
interminable maddening administrative meetings in his NHS hospital and to
accompany him to Ukraine where he has volunteered as a surgeon for over 15
years. You'll share his triumphs and suffer the sadness and humiliation of his
mistakes and failures.His war stories
are captivating; as are his anecdotes about his family, his education and his
jousting with the bureaucracy of the English National Health System (the NHS). Brief book review and large number of excerpts on OJCPCD.

A fine documentary, The English Surgeon, profiled Henry Marsh (you will need to scroll down if you check the link).

Friday, July 10, 2015

I've written In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts because I see addiction as
one of the most misunderstood phenomena in our society. People--including many
people who should know better, such as doctors and policy makers--believe it to
be a matter of individual choice or, at best, a medical disease. It is both
simpler and more complex than that.

Addiction, or the capacity to become addicted, is very close to the core of
the human experience. That is why almost anything can become addictive, from
seemingly healthy activities such as eating or exercising to abusing drugs
intended for healing. The issue is not the external target but our internal
relationship to it.

Addictions, for the most part, develop in a compulsive
attempt to ease one’s pain or distress in the world. Given the amount of pain
and dissatisfaction that human life engenders, many of us are driven to find
solace in external things. The more we suffer, and the earlier in life we
suffer, the more we are prone to become addicted.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

This is an
honest, sobering look at what awaits so many elderly people and their caregivers,
who are often family members. It is also the story of a
Medical-Industrial Complex gone wild: doing things to people for economic
gain. Expensive procedures that have serious unintended consequences are,
unfortunately, the rule. For a variety of reasons, many physicians
perform lucrative tests and interventions that do little to improve patients’
well-being. Death is seen as the ultimate enemy, yet we all will die.
How one dies is important, yet this is not considered often enough.

Knocking on
Heaven’s Door is the story of a singular family. All families are unique.
The narrative is memorable, but there is much more. Butler
discusses American medicine and its domination of patients and families, and
suggests ways we as patients and family members can try to protect ourselves.
It is also a wake-up call for physicians to try to change our behaviors
from running profit centers to being caregivers in the true sense of the word.

These
notes may help some of you who are too busy to read the entire book,
however, should you do so, you will find much more to interest you. I
learned a lot by a fairly careful reading of Katy Butler’s book, much that will
help me as a son, a caregiver and a physician.

Saturday, May 23, 2015

I am sitting at Mount Hope on a cool clear day. The vista is
beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky and the air is filled with birdsong. Here are some excerpts taken from the introduction to Johann Hari's remarkable book.

Lady Day

"How do we react to addicts and the war on drugs? We all know
the script. Treat addicts and drug users as criminals. Coerce them into
stopping. This is the prevailing view in almost every country.

Hari used to think that way but has changed his mind. He now
argues instead for a second strategy – legalize drugs stage by stage, and use
the money we currently spend on punishing addicts to fund compassionate care
instead."

The journey that he took to research and write this book took
him across nine countries and 30,000 miles and it would last for three years.
The story is a compelling read.

Drugs are not what we think they are. Drug addiction is not
what we have been told it is. There is a very different story waiting for us
when we are ready to hear it. Pick up this book and read.

Leigh Maddox:Policewoman/lawyer who once stalked addicts and now he workswith LEAP
(Law Enforcement Against Prohibition)

Sherif Joe Arpaio: Arizona reincarnation of Harry Anslinger.

Prisoner number 109416 (Marsha Powell): small time drug user
and victim of Arizona "justice" system.Gabor Mate: Family physician from British Columbia who is helping drug addicts on the front line.Bruce Alexander: a psychologist at SFU in Vancouver. He worked on a Rat Park study that showed it's the environment which creates addicts not
biology.Bud Osborn: An addict and an activist who organized the Downtown Eastside drug users and got them recognition and respect.John Marks: Liverpool psychiatrist who ran a drug prescription clinic and saved many lives until the British government disbanded it. He self-exiled himself to New Zealand.Ruth Dreifuss as president of Switzerland, she approved the establishment of drug distribution centres.Jose Mujica: The anarchist president of Uruguay who implemented legalization of many drugs.Mason Tvirt: Activist in Colorado who spearheaded that states campaign to legailze marijuana. He fought against Hickenlooper -- the CO governor.Tonia Winchester: An attorney who led a successful campaign to decriminalize marijuana in Washington state.

The author, Johann Hari, did a masterful job here. When I looked at his Wikipedia page, I was surprised to learn some disquieting facts about him - but feel they only make him a more scrupulous reporter her.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

This is a sobering and compelling pathography by a world-renown author.

I used to brag that I never
got sick. I rarely came down with colds or the flu. I had health
insurance for catastrophic illness and only used it once, for surgical
repair of a broken leg, the result of heli-skiing, the sport of a
vigorous and fearless person.

But in 1999, all that changed. I
learned what it is like to have a disease with no diagnosis, to be
baffled by what insurance covers and what it does not, and to have a
mind that can’t think fast enough to know whether a red traffic light
means to press on the gas or hit the brakes. I have late-stage
neuroborreliosis, otherwise known as Lyme Disease. The neurological part
reflects the fact that the bacteria, a spirochete called borrelia
burgdorferi, has gone into my brain.

Krakauer's book, Missoula, is focused on the most common type of rape: non-stranger sexual assault. While it reports from a Montana college town, Missoula's rape statistics are about average for the U.S.

The book has been criticized which is not surprising, however, I have read it twice and find it convincing and sobering. Alcohol seems to be an almost-constant factor. Alcohol, jocks and naive students -- female and male.

This is a hugely important topic and Missoula is an important introduction. Probably, everyone in high school, college, or with children at these stages should read it. Educators are another important audience.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Witness To Resilience is about everyday women who have endured domestic
violence in silence and secrecy. They're your mother, sister, daughter,
friend, neighbor, and colleague. Jane Seskin's poems chronicle her more
than twenty years working as a psychotherapist with survivors of
intimate violence. These are brutal stories told with compassion and
love.